CEDu 521 - Week 2

I love the idea of project based learning. One day I would like to plan my curriculum completely around new projects. Each topic that I do would be a new project for the students to work on, and move from topic to topic and project to project. If a student worked fast and well and finished their project early, then they could move on to another project. I know that this is going to take time and huge amounts of effort from both myself and my colleagues (luckily the other US History teacher is one of my best friends), but it is something that my school would really get into and it is the type of work that the International Baccalaureate program (the organization/program that my school is a part of) is looking for from students. I have heard that really good change in a school can take anywhere from 3 to 10 years to accomplish, so this is something that I'm looking at building on over the next several years, but I'm really looking forward to it, and it feels really good to feel like I am starting to work on it right now - even if it is just a small start.

CEDu 521 - Week 1

Having gone through 2 years of education about education at Stritch, I have learned a lot about inquiry based learning and it's positive effects on students. I really enjoy giving students an opinion-based question, historical problem, or something of the like and letting them run with it. This means that I really enjoyed this weeks readings on project-based learning. I have only been teaching for one year and I tried this a couple of times. There were some good things and some bad things, but there is a lot of opportunity to grow and build it up into something much more grand. I plan to one day have a classroom where the students go from one project to the next and make it through almost all of American history - the fast moving one's anyway. For those that don't move as fast, they would hopefully still get more out of what they did do, but still be allowed to advance their learning and skills. The most important thing to understand about this is that it is not going to happen overnight - it is going to take years to develop, but it is years that I am looking forward to. I can't wait to talk more about this in class.